Melissa Auf der Maur Announces Album BASS WOMB ROOM, Featuring First New Music in Over 15 Years

Melissa Auf der Maur has announced her new album, BASS WOMB ROOM: My ’90s 4-Track Demos x Field Recordings, containing previously unheard demos alongside “interludes” created for her upcoming My ’90s Rock Photographs book exhibition. Marking her first new music in over 15 years, it’s out September 4th via Envision Records. Check out a preview of the grinding new song “Skip a Beat” below.

BASS WOMB ROOM is highlighted by seven previously unreleased demos written and recorded by Auf der Maur on her Tascam 4-track tape recorder in her living room home studios in the 1990s. The Hole and Smashing Pumpkins bassist primarily began the process on an acoustic guitar, layering her vocals atop while using 4-track tricks such as reversing the cassette or pitch shifting.

Purchase My ’90s Rock Photographs

Lyrics were either streams of consciousness or lifted from her diary, with other instruments including bass, a vintage Ross phaser guitar pedal, and a cheap keyboard. Auf der Maur also used samples of everyday sounds such as a dripping leaky faucet and her camera shutter, which the musician captured with her trusty compact cassette dictaphone. Pre-orders of BASS WOMB ROOM are ongoing.

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“I wrote these songs in the context of rising pressure from the major label-driven music industry on myself and my peers to make glossy hit songs to dominate radio airwaves,” Auf der Maur shared in a statement.“These songs are the sound of my internal experimentation and a way of keeping the Montreal art girl alive inside. These sounds are the quiet and private side of the girl who joined the big American major label rock band.”

Besides these archival recordings, BASS WOMBROOM features eight new Alex Crow-produced interstitial sound pieces that will score Auf der Maur’s upcoming My ’90s Rock Photographs museum exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Presenting more than 200 personal photographs, the exhibit opens to members on September 2nd and to the public on September 8th. The latter date corresponds with the release date of the 240-page photobook My ’90s Rock Photographs. Pre-order your hardcover copy here.

My ’90s Rock Photographs follows the March release of Auf der Maur’s Even the Good Girls Will Cry: A ’90s Rock Memoir, which encompasses herstints in Hole and the Smashing Pumpkins.

BASS WOMB ROOM: My ’90s 4-Track Demos x Field Recordings Artwork:

BASS WOMB ROOM: My ’90s 4-Track Demos x Field Recordings Tracklist:
01. Active Heart
02. …And the Next Day
03. Courtney Chimes In
04. Desire is Critical
05. In the Reflection
06. Water Wars
07. Flesh Flush
08. Is She His
09. Billy Seoul Crowd
10. Love Is the Drug
11. Sparkle Bass
12. Fancy Piece (Featuring The Hunger World)
13. River’s Dream
14. Sea of Tranquility
15. Skip a Beat